Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Common House Size - Info Needed.

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

>
> Questions:
>
> 1. How many square feet of floor space do you currently have (or
> plan to have)
> in your Common House?

We have about 2200 square feet in phase 1.

>
> 2. How many square feet of floor space do you have (or plan to
> have) in your
> dining area including kitchen and pantry?

I am guessing about 1700. Our pantry is just a set of shelves.

>
> 3. How many households live, (or will live) in your cohousing community?

21 now, 16 owners households, 5 renter households with 36 adults and 24
kids. Will have about 38/40 households when when we are built out.

>
> 4. If you are up and running, how would you rate the size of your Common
> House? (a) seriously undersized, (b) somewhat undersized, (c)
> about right, (d)
> somewhat oversized, (e) seriously oversized.

About right currently, although the kids space is seriously undersized and
this impacts the rest of the space due to their activity levels. When its
just adults, the commonhouse is a nice size - even on the largish side for
22-25 adults who come to dinners, when the kids and running around it
somehow shrinks and seems much smaller. I particularly like our modest
ceiling height (14 feet at the peak). This makes the building much more
lodge like and less train station-like than some commonhouses I have been
in.


>
> 5. If you are up and running, how would you rate your dining area? (a)
> seriously undersized, (b) somewhat undersized, (c) about right,
> (d) somewhat
> oversized, (e) seriously oversized.

Our space, 22 X 40 is about right for 40-50 people dining. We have 6 tables
and could easily add a couple of more. We usually get 30 people or so at
dinners so the space is not maximized yet. Also one corner of this space is
taken up by some couches and such. The kitchen, food service (a table) and
the dining all flow into one another and I like this design. The cooks are
very much part of the flow, and not cut off from the rest of us. It
encourages people wandering in and engaging the cooks, it also makes it
really easy to help out. There are a couple of people who regularly show up
about 20 minutes before dinner and see if they can help out doing small
tasks, or just conversing. Its a great community builder.

>
> 6. If you have the time, we would love to hear about any changes you would
> make if you could redesign your Common House.

We built the one room approach, the great room. In our future remodel (we
designed the commmonhouse in 2 phases) I suspect we will add some additional
rooms. Our kids space 12 by 14 is much too small to contain the 20 kids that
show up for dinner and so that space could be expanded. Having a quiet
eating space would be something I would like myself, although not sure it
will be on the community agenda. I would change our scullery and go with a
above counter dishwasher setup, the under the counter setup SUCKS. Our
pantry is just a set of shelves and it is maxed and we could use some
additional space to store community purchase items. We have a single home
sized refer that will be upgraded eventually as it is also frequently maxed
out.

The biggest change I would make would be to set up behavioral expectations
for kids at the dining hour so the noise level was reasonable. I don't
participate in community meals anymore due to the noise.

To keep our costs down we built most of the commonhouse ourselves. Our
commonhouse, while not fancy and designer like some, is cosy, well used and
costs us $138,000 to build.

Our second phase programming will start sometime this summer. We have the
option of doing a couple different expansions, and it will interesting to
see what people want to do. As a lot development model, we really only need
space to gathering and eat. We don't need libraries, offices, laundry rooms,
etc. since we all have our own nice custom homes which have those things.
What we do need is space to gather and party in, eat meals, hold meetings,
indoor recreate. Our commonhouse meets that need now, and as we expand we
will want to expand the building some to accomodate those needs.

Also, remember that the larger the building you create, the more work you
have to do cleaning it. I sat in with one group that was talking about their
commonhouse planning and they had 7 bathrooms in the plan! Yikes, thats a
lot of toliets to clean. We seem to barely be able to keep 2 clean.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
A lot development model on 40 forested acres in the wilds of Snohomish, WA
where we have just set the record for the rainiest winter ever.